WARNING: SPOILERS!

Spun-off from this week's conference call thread. What are your feelings on spoilers? Do you care one way or the other? Want to go into everything totally fresh? Will stay away even at the risk of awkwardly ending conversations prematurely?

What do you care about, game-wise? Only avoid major plot points? Don't even want gameplay mechanics spoiled?

For my part, about the only thing I really care about being spoiled on are whodunit mysteries. Everything else is fair game, especially if it furthers involvement in a discussion. Frankly, before I've played/read something most spoilers make no bloody sense anyway, and I've likely forgotten about them by the time I reach that point in my chosen media.

That said, I suppose I often withhold spoilers in conversation with others, though usually if it's something more like a philosophical game -- this is because I am really curious in their unadulterated reaction to certain elements, and I don't want to color their experience. A recent example would be the handful of folks who are now playing Persona 3, and my careful dancing around several issues about which I'm eager to converse but want their opinions first.

I feel like it's my job to avoid spoilers about the games I care to not have spoiled, not podcast hosts. I always appreciate and understand a warning and time stamps, but I absolutely hate seeing an interesting conversation cut off short because people don't want to spoil anything. In the height of game release season it's unreasonable to have separate spoiler episodes or sections for the big games everyone is talking about right now, especially since in two weeks it's going to be some other game that everyone wants to talk about.

For the best games, the most interesting conversation to be had usually will involve massive spoilers, if you're not willing to do that you're going to have considerably more boring conversations about the game.

My feelings are This is a game site, we talk about games together. If you don't want to encounter a spoiler, don't read the threads about that game, stick with the box art until the game launches and you get to install it.

Spoiler:

In before Snape killed Dumbledore

I don't like unannounced spoilers. If I am listening to a podcast or reading a review about a game that just game out this month - I sort of feel a bit like my trust is violated if someone spoils plot points for me. I feel like my experience is soiled a bit because I don't get to find out on my own about what happens in the story. That said, as a guy who plays a lot of games with walkthroughs - I often spoil things for myself.

I guess it is all about agency (I can't remember who said that in the podcast recap thread, but I totally agree). If you give me notice, like skip the next paragraph or don't listen for 30 seconds, I always appreciate that.

koshnika wrote:

My feelings are This is a game site, we talk about games together. If you don't want to encounter a spoiler, don't read the threads about that game, stick with the box art until the game launches and you get to install it.

Spoiler:

In before Snape killed Dumbledore

We talk about games because we are enthusiastic about them. I always assume that there is a gentleman's agreement that you don't spoil for your buddy without giving him notice, like the spoiler text option.

Depends on the game. Describe the big twist scene in Bioshock to me and I'd have been pissed. Tell me every shred of plot in Gears of War 2 (that should take at least 90 seconds) and -- meh.

Story driven and well written games require more special handling in my book.

LilCodger wrote:

Depends on the game. Describe the big twist scene in Bioshock to me and I'd have been pissed. Tell me every shred of plot in Gears of War 2 (that should take at least 90 seconds) and -- meh.

Story driven and well written games require more special handling in my book.

Absolutely. Many games I don't mind the "spoilers" discussed on podcasts, but I definitely did not enjoy the Heavy Rain spoilers on the GWJ conference call that happened not once, but twice.

I also don't like the "the game is a year old" attitude towards spoilers. Not everyone plays them on day one.

Spoiler:

Spoilers don't really bother me. I am forgetful so... Anyway what does bother me is possibly maybe ruining something for someone. Not knowing what could be a possible spoiler I just rarely post stuff these days.

I think the only spoiler that's ever really bugged me was when I had the big twist in KOTOR spoiled for me. I don't know why that one grated on my nerves, when detailed discussions of other games don't bother me at all.

One factor for me is that I don't think the vast majority of games have very good stories that need protecting like they're the crown jewels, with the flip side that there are a few that do have notable plots. I have limited sympathy, and feel minimal displeasure in being spoiled for obvious overused tropes, "Oh you didn't see that the shifty guy was going to betray you when they needed a new push in the plot for the last two levels? Really?".

Following from the poor story angle, most games don't really excel in story telling, I've commented before that most games are hand cranked story dispensers rather than being remarkable by having the player be part of the story and influence it. What most games do well enough is the gameplay bit, where it feels really cool to do something. It's a similar gripe to how "cinematic games" should be a measure of how bad they are. If you want something cinematic watch a movie, if you want an in-depth story just told to you, read a book. Games are active, and the treasured part of a game should be that active bit, if it's tied into the story, all the better.

That said, spoilers are one of those things where you need to be sensible about it, on both sides of the spoiler/spoiled coin, but also you're never going to please everyone.

ChrisGwinn wrote:

I think the only spoiler that's ever really bugged me was when I had the big twist in KOTOR spoiled for me. I don't know why that one grated on my nerves, when detailed discussions of other games don't bother me at all.

The one where Vader is your father?

I, oddly, don't really care about spoilers in video games but I will cut you if you ruin a book/movie/tv show for me.

Spoiler warning!

IMAGE(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4LWNF7ykf9s/TDRhNet7l4I/AAAAAAAAD1U/T5PR0vrh8zc/s1600/wing.jpg)

Seriously though, yeah, I hate spoilers. I hate spoilers because there is absolutely no way one can convey an experience as well as the experience itself. In other words, you are taking something that you enjoyed enough to relay to others, and you're making absolutely sure the other person's experience is inferior to your own.

If you want to talk about it, wait for them to get there themselves. Then you can actually discuss it.

From an artistic standpoint, I'd say that giving people information out of order like that messes with the creator's vision as well. If they wanted a player to go in with that knowledge, it would have been in the opening.

Scratched wrote:

One factor for me is that I don't think the vast majority of games have very good stories that need protecting like they're the crown jewels, with the flip side that there are a few that do have notable plots.

Even if you're right, and a game has a crappy story that isn't worth protecting, if you spoil something for someone you're making that decision for them. I don't think that's right.

I don't care about spoilers. Even in situations where I've said "don't tell me about this thing," as I did with some of the mechanics in Persona 3, I won't really be upset if I find that information out. It's just not important to me to be surprised by developments in movies, books, games, or any other media. If a spoiler sounds neat, it's something to look forward to. I'm looking forward to the ending of Arkham City, for example, since I know what it is. I'm eager to see how it affects me and how exactly it plays out.

However, nothing shuts down a conversation faster than someone saying that it can't spoil things, because people have become so sensitive about spoilers that anything is a spoiler. I've seen people giving spoiler warnings for things in Arkham City that literally happen before the opening credits have finished rolling. For conversations, I tend to go by the movie critic rule of thumb that the first quarter of a movie's plot is fair game, as is anything in the trailer or advertising, but I've run into plenty of people who think that's too much.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

For conversations, I tend to go by the movie critic rule of thumb that the first quarter of a movie's plot is fair game, as is anything in the trailer or advertising, but I've run into plenty of people who think that's too much.

I think that's reasonable but I'm not sure it works as a blanket rule. Sometimes there are things in trailers that are MAJOR spoilers, but are presented with too little context for the audience to KNOW they're spoilers until it happens in the story.

For instance, one of the pre-release trailers for Final Fantasy VII showed Cloud standing in a pool of water, holding Aerith. Some of you hopefully remember that as the scene where Cloud is laying her dead body to rest. That is the spoiler of our generation.

I feel comfortable spoiling it here because I do believe in a statute of limitations.

LobsterMobster wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

For conversations, I tend to go by the movie critic rule of thumb that the first quarter of a movie's plot is fair game, as is anything in the trailer or advertising, but I've run into plenty of people who think that's too much.

I think that's reasonable but I'm not sure it works as a blanket rule. Sometimes there are things in trailers that are MAJOR spoilers, but are presented with too little context for the audience to KNOW they're spoilers until it happens in the story.

For instance, one of the pre-release trailers for Final Fantasy VII showed Cloud standing in a pool of water, holding Aerith. Some of you hopefully remember that as the scene where Cloud is laying her dead body to rest. That is the spoiler of our generation.

I feel comfortable spoiling it here because I do believe in a statute of limitations. :D

I get what you're saying, but out of context imagery like that is more the exception than the rule. Using that specific image, it's the difference between saying "at some point, Cloud will stand in a pool of water holding Aerith" and "Aerith dies." If the trailer makes explicit that the guy in Dream House is actually hallucinating his past, or, to use an example from here at GWJ, that Alan Tudyk's character on V was actually a recurring cast member and not dead after the pilot, that's fair game.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Seriously though, yeah, I hate spoilers. I hate spoilers because there is absolutely no way one can convey an experience as well as the experience itself. In other words, you are taking something that you enjoyed enough to relay to others, and you're making absolutely sure the other person's experience is inferior to your own.

Agreed. I would have been very disappointed if someone had spoiled me on the twist in Bioshock or the ending to Portal 2. Even in a non-story driven game like Dark Souls, a huge part of the appeal of the game is the unknown. Not knowing what, where, or how I'm going to get murdered in the face adds a level of tension that would all but disappear if someone told me what lies beyond the white mist. I've stopped listening to a few podcasts solely because they throw out spoilers so haphazardly.

The twist in Bioshock has been spoiled so often in the last few years. Some people are more diplomatic and only spoil the time/location of the twist, but that still ruins the surprise somewhat.

Scratched wrote:

One factor for me is that I don't think the vast majority of games have very good stories that need protecting like they're the crown jewels, with the flip side that there are a few that do have notable plots. I have limited sympathy, and feel minimal displeasure in being spoiled for obvious overused tropes, "Oh you didn't see that the shifty guy was going to betray you when they needed a new push in the plot for the last two levels? Really?".

Sometimes I feel like the lack of quality in games actually enhances the need to go into the plot blind. It's not like the rest of the narrative is Colston Whitehead prose--the surprise is probably the only thing keeping the plot fresh at all.

Dyni wrote:

Even in a non-story driven game like Dark Souls, a huge part of the appeal of the game is the unknown.

Same goes for every narrative. As I said last time this dead horse cropped up to be whipped, a spoiler not only spoils the moment, it spoils everything related to that moment--just to take the most obvious example, knowing a character dies makes one ask every time that character is in a scene "Is this the scene where they die?"

Seriously, it's just politeness, and the button's right f*cking there.

Personally i dislike plot spoilers. I feel that the lack of respect for other people's wishes when people blatantly just out spoilers because they don't care is just a horrible attitude. There are many things i don't care about in life but i at least realise other people do care about those things. I also know that many things i do not consider spoilery are spoilers for other people. So it's a bit of a minefield and i realise people will let things accidentally slip out even if they don't mean to.

One of the reasons i dislike spoilers is that you remove the opportunity to enter into a sequence or particular space without a blank slate: you can't form your own opinions and emotions as well becuase you already expect it and so they are subsumed or co-opted by the person(s) who spoiled the incident for you (as the opinion is often stated with plot spoilers).

So.... if these had been spoiled i know that i would not have enjoyed them in the same way that i did when i experienced them for the first time:

Spoiler:

[list]
[*]Bioshock twist
[*]Scarecrow "crash/reboot" in Arkham Asylum
[*]ICO/Shadow of the Colossus (the whole transformation/ending of either/both)
[*]PoP: TSOT ending

I like discussing them after i've had my own chance to experience them and gather my own thoughts but that's the problem with the "catch-all" style of thread we have here on GWJ. You go to the thread to talk about the game as you're experiencing it or to see if people are having problems (technical and mechanical) or to see if people would recommend the game to you to buy or rent or whatever. Saying "don't read the thread" is a bit harsh because you incorrectly assume that the thread only exists to cater to you.

It wasn't really that long ago that we had this same discussion in Everything Else after that paper was released telling me/us that spoilers are no big deal and that we actually enjoy them.... riiiiiiiight. I bet the authors like spoiling things too because they like to tell people what to think!

Duoae wrote:

One of the reasons i dislike spoilers is that you remove the opportunity to enter into a sequence or particular space without a blank slate: you can't form your own opinions and emotions as well becuase you already expect it and so they are subsumed or co-opted by the person(s) who spoiled the incident for you (as the opinion is often stated with plot spoilers).

I like discussing them after i've had my own chance to experience them and gather my own thoughts but that's the problem with the "catch-all" style of thread we have here on GWJ. You go to the thread to talk about the game as you're experiencing it or to see if people are having problems (technical and mechanical) or to see if people would recommend the game to you to buy or rent or whatever. Saying "don't read the thread" is a bit harsh because you incorrectly assume that the thread only exists to cater to you.

That's where I think both sides of spoiler/spoiled need to take responsibility. If you're reading a discussion thread, you're being very idealistic to think the story in a game that has a decent story isn't going to be discussed. If it's that important to you for a game you haven't played yet, or to a certain point yet, that it gets you hot and bothered to be spoiled, stay out of the damn thread.

But then that isn't both sides. Especially near release date. That's "I'm gonna spoil so stay out of the thread". I.e. GWJ is only for spoilers... unless the game has separate Spoiler/non-spoiler threads as sometimes happens.

But then, maybe that's the argument you're making? Advocating a site where people can't ask questions or discuss problems? Take something like Dead Island where there were a lot of release problems - yes, spoilers weren't a problem for that game (IMO) but saying someone who dislikes spoilers should avoid the community help with those problems because of the off-chance that there could be spoilers there for a different, plot-heavy game is just ridiculous....

What about the people in the Skyrim thread, asking whether they should start TES with Skyrim or go and play an older game in the series first? TBH, on the scale spoilers for Elder scrolls games are mid-way for me. I don't mind seeing them personally but i can imagine other people might... Are you saying there's no place for those people on this site?

What about if someone wants to post that they're enjoying a game or share something? Should they avoid the thread because the US got it a week earlier and everyone's already completed the game?

I think it's a different situation if you're talking about times further away from release, I agree with you in that instance - don't go back and read through the whole thread, for instance.

That's why I said you're never going to find a solution for everyone. Some (hopefully minor) things will be spoiled, it's almost inevitable. As has already been mentioned in the thread if you're die hard about avoiding spoilers, then you might as well avoid all the official publicity as well. Dragons in Skyrim? You're the dragonborn and gain powers from them? That's sounding a little spoilery to me. You can find any extreme to prove any point, but what I'd say is that if you're at one of those extremes then you need to be responsible for yourself avoiding spoilers, rather than everyone else tip-toeing around you. Again, being reasonable, it would be bad form to put a major spoiler out in the open in an unrelated thread.

Scratched wrote:

Again, being reasonable, it would be bad form to put a major spoiler out in the open in an unrelated thread.

I was right there with you until this sentence.... which is basically a cop-out. So:

And in a related thread?

Those spoiler buttons and spoiler "click to show" things must be damn inconvenient...

You're nit-picking. For the record I would put significant spoilers in a spoiler tags, whatever thread, that's reasonable.

Spoilers don't bother me in the least. On the contrary, having the ending to RDR spoiled on the Weekend Confirmed podcast was what convinced me to finish it.

I really, really hate the fact that people have to tiptoe around everything because of super sensitive spoiler types because it ruins any meaningful conversation. Is it a game that was released last week? Fine, I can understand not giving away the major plot twist. But there has to be some kind of responsibility on the user to avoid media about a game if they are that crazy about spoilers, as MojoBox said. For starters, a game that is a year old is fair game. I can't believe people still have to talk around their points years after a game is released.

Spoiler tags are usually useless in their design because it also cuts off conversation. All I see is a big block of text. Is that person spoiling something inconsequential that I would like to read and respond to? Or something right at the beginning? Who knows? I'll have to wait until I completely finish the game to play it safe, at which point that discussion is weeks old.

And it forces most podcast discussions of games to be rather meaningless and trite. Everyone complains that so many podcasts fail to really heavily discuss a game beyond skin deep talking points, but I don't know what else they can do when everyone feels anything is a spoiler and it's already rare enough for two people to have finished the same game. It always leads to two types of conversations on podcasts. Either (a) Even a two-second spoiler has to be built up with "Okay, if you don't want to be spoiled, skip ahead for a while...okay walk across the room and hit stop because...I'm...going...to...spoil...it....now" which completely ruins the pace of discussion; (b) It leads to inane commentary like "Oh man, I don't want to spoil anything but where I am now. Wow. It's...amazing. Something amazing happens when you get to Mexico, but I can't talk about it. Maybe in a few months we can talk about it" which then leads to them never remembering to go back to it and about a hundred angry comments who feel the fact that the guy mentioned you go to Mexico was a big spoiler.

I think Jeff Gerstmann's responses were great when a bunch of whiners complained about the horrible unannounced spoiler during their bombcast which had the shocking revelation that you confront the Shadow Broker at the end of the Shadow Broker DLC - and this was months after it was released.

IMAGE(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a263/kevlarcardhouse/spoiler.png)

kaptainbarbosa wrote:

I really, really hate the fact that people have to tiptoe around everything because of super sensitive spoiler types because it ruins any meaningful conversation.

Don't hold back! Tell us what you really think....

Maybe we should silence all those feminists, minorities and political dissidents as well, right? (Not drawing a comparison between the reasons or gravitas of the items but of the dismissal of them through name calling and the fallacy that it impacts people who do not partake in that in some way.)

Aside from the fact that most meaningful conversations don't happen in catch-all game threads. Most of them happen in specific "hey this is what i thought" threads - even here on GWJ. The exception being, in my experience, the Dragon Age 2 spoilers thread.... which had no such issue because it had the label "spoilers" on it.

Disregarding all that, you seem to be all for spoilers if they're within a certain timeframe... so what's your problem here?

Spoiler tags are usually useless in their design because it also cuts off conversation.

You know what? Man UP! Seriously, you complain about the super sensitive spoiler types and then can't get up the balls to decide whether you want to potentially spoil something yourself? I've never had a problem with either the old system of "highlight the spoiler text" or the new system of "click to reveal"... and i've never seen a thread where it stifled the conversation. Talk about non-issues here.

And it forces most podcast discussions of games to be rather meaningless and trite.

No, it doesn't. Having run a few podcasts myself i understand what the limitations are here. They are precisely sort of what you're inadvertantly saying: People play games at different rates; on a podcast you can't even guarantee that all the people have played the same game and so there are VERY different reasons why discussing games in any depth (with the exception of the excellent Retronauts) on a podcast fails to happen. Regardless of that fact you shouldn't even BE discussing a game with any depth IN any depth on a podcast within a couple of weeks of release. I mean, talk about jumping the gun. There's not even enough time for proper analysis or comparison. Also, generally, the podcasting crew have enough respect for each other not to spoil what's going to happen in the game for the people who've played less....

I think Jeff Gerstmann's responses were great when a bunch of whiners

You know what's more attractive than a whiner? A whiner complaining about whiners.

Now, where's my DRM thread?!

:_/

[edit] I happen to agree with the Gerstmann Shadow Broker anti-complaints but his analogy of the person who was avoiding media and having the score spoiled to him by someone who told him to avoid all media was just idiocy incarnate.

I see the comment a lot that having spoiler-free discussions is easy because the spoiler button is right there. But that's actually not the hard part of having a spoiler-free discussion; the hard part is figuring out what a spoiler is.

There are things that, I'm sure, pretty much everyone can agree on: plot twists and endings and all that jazzy jazz. Aerith dies? Yeah, that's a spoiler. Everyone can agree on that, and those kinds of things are almost invariably spoiler-tagged on GWJ. Now consider the following things that have been considered spoilers for things, and tell me if you think they're spoilers (warning: this list contains things that might or might not be spoilers; I've limited it to things more than a couple years old, but you've been warned):

  • That there is a crossbow in Bioshock. You don't get it until a few hours into the game.
  • That you can shoot bees out of your hands in Bioshock. You won't be able to get this plasmid until a few hours into the game.
  • That you begin Half-Life 2 in a place called City 17 and that Gordon Freeman has been in a hibernation, of sorts, since the last game. This is revealed literally within the first few minutes of Half-Life 2, but it resolves a major mystery from Half-Life.
  • That Harley Quinn, who is pictured on the box art, appears in Arkham Asylum.
  • That there are no enemies in Shadow of the Colossus but the Colossi.
  • The number of worlds or levels in a Super Mario game.
  • That you can perform summons in Final Fantasy IX. You don't gain this ability until, I think, the end of the first disc, but it's a standard Final Fantasy trope.
  • That you don't play that majority of Metal Gear Solid 2 as Solid Snake.

And what about spoilers in the following situations?

  • The game is over a year old.
  • The game is over three years old.
  • The game is over ten years old.
  • You're discussing a game in a thread dedicated to its sequel (e.g., talking about Dead Space in the Dead Space 2 thread).
  • You're discussing a game in a thread dedicated to its reboot or spiritual successor (e.g., talking about Baldur's Gate in the Dragon Age thread).
  • A new developer diary has been released for a game that's a month away from release; do you talk about the mechanics mentioned in that developer diary?
  • The trailer for a game has just come out and reveals that a character thought dead in an earlier game is actually alive. Can you talk about that without spoiler tags?

It's just just as simple as "click the spoiler button and don't be an asshole," because people have wildly different ideas about what constitutes a spoiler. Which is how blind spoiler tags (where no hint is given to their content) can stifle conversation: what's this person's definition of a spoiler? Will I click the tag and find out that I'll get to summon Shiva, which I don't care about, or that the SEEDS Garden is actually a floating fortress I'll use as a vehicle, which I do care about?

I'm not saying that all discussions here or elsewhere should be spoiler-heavy, as that's not fair to people who are concerned about spoilers, but this is what people are talking about when they say that people who are really concerned about spoilers are partly responsible for policing themselves: what's a spoiler to them might not be a spoiler to other people. I don't agree with Jeff Gerstmann's response above, but I do agree that what he said wasn't a spoiler, and I don't think most people would think it was a spoiler, either. That's the kind of thing the spoiler-concerned need to be aware will happen and cut the rest of us a little slack, like we cut them a little slack by maybe using spoiler tags more often than we think is necessary.

It's all about compromise and trying to be understanding.

@ Duoae - To try and break the deadlock, what would you see as 'the reasonable spoiler rules' for a thread discussing a game?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

And what about spoilers in the following situations?

You're never going to get it perfect because not everyone comes to the game at the same time or progresses through it at the same rate. There's always people who will finish a game in a really short time (usually exacerbated by different regional or platform release dates), people who'll take a long time, people who pick it up a few months later in a sale, second hand or when it's patched up. As you say, you need to be reasonable.

I just want to pipe in that I agree full on with Duoae. Just because you don't mind about spoilers doesn't mean others feel the same. Better to err on the side of caution, in my book.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Now consider the following things that have been considered spoilers for things, and tell me if you think they're spoilers (warning: this list contains things that might or might not be spoilers; I've limited it to things more than a couple years old, but you've been warned):

  • That there is a crossbow in Bioshock. You don't get it until a few hours into the game.
  • That you can shoot bees out of your hands in Bioshock. You won't be able to get this plasmid until a few hours into the game.
  • That you begin Half-Life 2 in a place called City 17 and that Gordon Freeman has been in a hibernation, of sorts, since the last game. This is revealed literally within the first few minutes of Half-Life 2, but it resolves a major mystery from Half-Life.
  • That Harley Quinn, who is pictured on the box art, appears in Arkham Asylum.
  • That there are no enemies in Shadow of the Colossus but the Colossi.
  • The number of worlds or levels in a Super Mario game.
  • That you can perform summons in Final Fantasy IX. You don't gain this ability until, I think, the end of the first disc, but it's a standard Final Fantasy trope.
  • That you don't play that majority of Metal Gear Solid 2 as Solid Snake.

And what about spoilers in the following situations?

  • The game is over a year old.
  • The game is over three years old.
  • The game is over ten years old.
  • You're discussing a game in a thread dedicated to its sequel (e.g., talking about Dead Space in the Dead Space 2 thread).
  • You're discussing a game in a thread dedicated to its reboot or spiritual successor (e.g., talking about Baldur's Gate in the Dragon Age thread).
  • A new developer diary has been released for a game that's a month away from release; do you talk about the mechanics mentioned in that developer diary?
  • The trailer for a game has just come out and reveals that a character thought dead in an earlier game is actually alive. Can you talk about that without spoiler tags?

Ignoring that you considered all these spoilers but didn't put them behind a spoiler tag...

I, personally, only consider the Metal Gear Solid 2 thing an actual spoiler becuase it effects what you expect from the game when the game starts off with you as solid snake and switches to Raidan - you expect to switch back, or at least *I* did. I can't comment on the time-framed spoilers because it would be dependent on what was being discussed.** Weapons that aren't plot related, sequel material and reboots or things that are released on the box art or in a trailer (well, trailers can be murky territory so this might be dependent on how stupid the director/creator of the trailer is) are not spoilers. Mechanics are not spoilers for me either.

Yes there will always be people at the extremes that consider everything spoilerish.... We can't or shouldn't cater to them any more than we can or should cater to those who believe there are no such things as spoilers. On a personal note, i've not seen ANY of these things brought up at GWJ... so i'm not sure where you're getting them from. I don't personally hold the wider internet to the same standards as the fine people at GWJ... just like i don't go looking through the threads at IGN or Eurogamer for information or opinions on stuff.

@Scratched, very difficult to answer. I honestly think it's very dependent and I don't mind seeing people blurt out a spoiler or two in a thread as long as if someone says, "hey, spoiler tags please!" and they then do spoiler tag it. We're all human after all and we don't all have the same tastes. I'm not willing to wish anger on people because they unwittingly offended or upset someone else. Hell, I've been asked/told to quit spoiling things before... and i always do in response. The only two "rules" i would want in thread etiquette are that 1. People respect other people's opinion as long as it is not offensive or ridiculous and 2. Think on the level of spoiler it might be. E.g. Comparing Ryan's monologue to the crossbow in Bioshock is... well, it's insulting to most people's intelligence, IMO and the expectation on each item as being the same is unrealistic.

**Would you, for instance, knowing a close friend had never seen an amazing watershed movie in your past experience (or book) and was about to watch it spoil the plot for them? Or would you wish them to experience it as you had when you first saw (read) it?